Where Our Current Moment of Political Violence Began

I began writing this piece, about what I remember from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in 2016 and how it presaged our current era of political violence, before what is being called an “assassination attempt” on former president Donald Trump happened on Saturday evening. After the news broke, I paused. Was this appropriate? Actually, there’s never been a more important time to understand where this came from. It also looks like the shooter was a 20-year-old male registered Republican, but I don’t read too much into that—at 20, many young people are politically unformed, though they have access to guns. I won’t blame an ideology, except for the right wing’s gun worship. And we’ll never know why the Secret Service, maligned for its event security, let Trump pause after they rushed in to protect him, and stand and raise his fist in a fascist salute. He waved it around maniacally and almost hit the female agent closest to him in the head. Why they let him take a victory lap in a dangerous situation—there could have been other shooters—we’ll never know.

President Biden’s campaign pulled all his (increasingly wonderful and populist) ads down. I guess that’s what you do, if you’re a decent human being. Imagine the situation reversed: Trump would be running ads that say grazing Biden’s ear will worsen his (nonexistent) Parkinson’s. They are monsters; we are not. To his political credit, in a somber Oval Office address Sunday night, Biden put the attack on Trump in the context where it belongs: of January 6, the brutal beating of Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, and the kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

But the monsters are still blaming Biden’s completely valid attacks on Trump as if they set up this (nominal Republican) to shoot the disgraced former president. Democrats must recover quickly and say Trump has been uniquely responsible for stoking the violence that apparently grazed his ear. There’s so much metaphor there, but he won’t hear it.

So let me return to my original storyline. This current era of random political violence started for me at the 2016 RNC in Cleveland.

Ohio is an open-carry state. MSNBC’s Joy Reid and I remembered that when two men with rifles slung over their shoulders stood watching us broadcast live on Joy’s set, the weekend before the convention began. Cleveland was still quiet, but our area was busy. And we had no security yet, although eventually the network provided people, probably later that day. I don’t write to complain but to narrate.

Were we actually frightened? I can’t remember entirely. I know we thought it creepy. Yesterday, I asked Reid what she remembered.

“Yes, Cleveland was terrifying!” she texted me. I’m always in denial. “It was the most chilling week,” another friend who was there recalls.

Our set got moved inside the restaurant, to make us less-easy targets, she recalls. Later, I believe, MSNBC sets themselves got some kind of security.

I felt a growing sense of threat as the week went on, as every night the speakers and the crowd got more brutal toward Hillary Clinton. There was absolutely no policy agenda, no exhortations to a better America—only hatred and fury toward Trump’s opponent. I remember running into Roger Stone and Alex Jones hawking “Hillary for Prison” shirts early that week. The crowd around them seemed feral, aroused.

As I wrote at the time, victims of savagery (allegedly) from our border to Benghazi were paraded before us. “I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son,” a furious Pat Smith declared about the killing of her son Sean in the 2012 Benghazi attack. The crowd then chanted, “Hillary for prison,” a sentiment that was the only unifying idea of the night. Later, they enlivened a lackluster post-Melania speech by retired general (and Trump VP possibility) Michael Flynn by repeatedly shouting, “Lock her up!”